Despite retired NFL star Tom Brady being considered one of the greatest athletes of all time, he recently lost a throwing challenge to a high school quarterback.
The seven-time Super Bowl champion competed against Jake Balanovich from Cypress Bay High School in Florida. The two competed in a challenge proposed by YouTuber MrBeast, as part of his video series in which professional athletes play against average people.
Brady and Balanovich were tasked with popping four balloons on a field by throwing a football. The balloons were increasingly placed farther away, with the farthest balloon requiring a 50-yard throw to pop. To make the match more fair, Brady’s balloons were smaller than Balanovich’s and required more precision to pop.
MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, brought the teenager’s classmates onto the field to cheer him on throughout the contest. Brady even admitted he was impressed, fist-bumping Balanovich after he successfully popped his balloons.
Although the two were neck-and-neck throughout most of the contest, the high school student ended up popping all of his balloons first and took home the $100,000 prize.
Throughout his high school football season, Balanovich — who is currently a senior — completed 106-of-175 passes for 1,551 yards and 14 touchdowns.
In addition to Brady’s numerous Super Bowl wins, including six with the New England Patriots and one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he is also the NFL’s all-time passing leader with 89,214 yards throughout his 23 seasons.
Most recently, the football legend admitted that despite his success on the field, he still feels he “screwed up” as a parent. Brady shares 17-year-old son Jack with ex Bridget Moynahan, as well as son Benjamin, 14, and daughter Vivian, 11, with his ex-wife Gisele Bündchen.
Speaking at New York City’s Global Fortune Global Forum, he explained what it’s like to be a parent. “Being a parent is probably the hardest job all of us have and we screw up a lot,” he said. “And I’ve screwed up a lot as a parent.”
While he doesn’t claim to be “some expert in parenting,” he still wants to be someone his children can call on when they need him.
Brady also mentioned some parenting techniques that he picked up from his own parents, Galynn and Thomas Brady. The retired athlete remembered how his mother and father showed him unconditional support when he started to doubt his dreams of making a career out of football.
“When I was that long shot as a kid, who was the backup quarterback on a freshman team, they never said, ‘Man, don’t do that. It’s gonna be too hard. Let’s do something different. Let’s think about another backup plan,’” he said. “They kind of said, ‘You know what? Go for it. Whatever you wanna be, go for it.’”
The former quarterback went on to say that his son Jack wants to be a professional basketball player, and he plans to support him the same way his parents did for him.
“To be a boy, it sucks to be Tom Brady’s son in so many ways and I try to empathize that with them,” Brady said. “My kids naturally are gonna be faced with their own challenges, and they gotta figure out how to overcome them, too. And I’ll be there to support them a lot like my parents did. And I’ll be learning along the way right there with them.”
